Knowing, I think, that I’d never be able to keep up a full journal, I decided to kill two birds with one stone: I would write letters and keep carbon copies of them in the journal.
Rereading a Thirty-Five-Year-Old Letter
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Living
Around the World in 1984
Thirty-five years ago today, I embarked a trip around the world.
The Sultan and Me
Among some of my faculty colleagues in New York, NYU Abu Dhabi and the recreation of NYU as a Global Network University remain controversial, if not downright undesirable, projects. Some of my colleagues have gone so far as to engage in e-mail diatribes against those...
Quixotic
Definition: foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals; especially : marked by rash lofty romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action (from Merriam-Webster). Example: trying to recycle in Abu Dhabi. Recycling in Abu Dhabi involves taking this ......
Petra, Day 1
I first encountered “Petra” as a college student, when I read Melville’s short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” The story’s narrator makes reference to it when he goes to his law offices one weekend and discovers that his inscrutable scrivener Bartleby has been...
Africa Journal (II) – Amboseli
On our second day in Africa, we went to Wilson Airport in Nairobi to catch a Safarilink propeller plane to Amboseli National Park, where we stayed at the Amboseli Serena Safari Lodge. Amboseli is 2 degrees 40 ' south of the equator, so we were visiting during the...
Wildlife Near Where We Slept
At the Serena Lodge in Amboseli, Kenya, there were monkeys with bright turquoise balls roaming around ... At the Kichwa Tembo Tented Camp in the Masai Mara, Kenya, there were warthogs nosing around outside our tent ... ... and Harry the Hyrax in the woods raising a...
Africa Journal (I) – The Norfolk
One of the wonderful things about living in Abu Dhabi is its relatively proximity to places that are pretty remote if you’re living in New York. We’ve been lucky enough to do quite a bit of traveling in the past few months. My older son went to Ephesus in Turkey with...
New York Skyline
Literally. Returning to New York for our summer visit, we were greeted by an absolutely perfect (and unseasonably cool) summer evening.